From Kanye West to Telegram, characters sued by Kevin Castell

New York

Judge Kevin Castell has prosecuted artists like Kanye West and Lucradis and other celebrities like pilot Scott Tucker, convicted of loan fraud, as well as banking institutions like Bank of America and telecommunications companies like Telegram.

In 2006, this US judge presided over a dispute between BMS Entertainment and Christopher Bridges and Kanye West. The lawsuit involved allegations of copyright infringement against Christopher “Ludacris” Bridges and famous rapper Kanye West. However, Bridges and West pushed back against claims that the song “Stand Up” copied the work of a group of New Jersey musicians, specifically the group It’s Only Family’s tune “Straight Like That”.

In a two-week trial in Manhattan District Court, the 10 jurors returned their verdicts after less than 24 hours of deliberations. The artist emerged victorious when a jury chaired by Castells concluded that his 2003 hit “Stand Up” did not copy the New Jersey musicians’ tune.

Outside the courthouse, where West was not present, Ludacris signed autographs and posed for photos with fans before leaving for Los Angeles. Ludacris said that he never doubted that the jury would agree that the song he and West had created was not “Straight Like That”.

In 2013, Castells presided over the securities fraud class action lawsuit arising from the acquisition of Merrill Lynch & Company by Bank of America. In 2013, Castells approved a US$2.43 billion stock deal.

Bank of America agreed to pay a multimillion-dollar sum to settle claims that it withheld key information from shareholders when it bought investment bank Merrill Lynch & Co. The settlement, the largest of its kind, underscores how much Bank of America lost. The decisions he took during the 2008 crisis.

Shareholders sued the bank and executives such as former CEO Ken Lewis, but Bank of America agreed to pay the settlement. Investors said Merrill Lynch’s losses and bonuses should have been disclosed before the vote to approve the deal in December 2008. As part of the deal, the bank also made changes to its corporate governance by January 1, 2015. Some of the changes were already part of a February 2010 settlement with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission.

Castells presided over civil forfeiture proceedings related to the return of the rare Tyrannosaurus Baatar skeleton to the nation of Mongolia.

In 2013, by the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York in connection with an order sought by the United States Government to seize an imported Mongolian Tarbosaurus skeleton (named Tyrannosaurus bataar) relating to the trafficking statute and its applicability A decision was issued. Mongolian law in the United States.

Florida fossil hunter Eric Prokopi sold the skeleton of a dinosaur called Tarbosaurus bataar at auction, but was sued by the Mongolian government, which claimed the fossil was stolen from its territory. Prokopi faced legal process and pleaded guilty to multiple charges of smuggling and fraud, and agreed to return T. bataar and other fossils to Mongolia. The case raised awareness of the problem of illegal fossil trade. The skeleton eventually reached Mongolia, where it was welcomed as a national hero and displayed in a museum. Prokopy worked with authorities to identify and recover other stolen fossils, and how this changed his perspective on his passion for fossils.

In 2016, Castells presided over a month-long hearing of lawsuits brought by U.S. Bank National Association investors against UBS Real Estate Securities Inc., who claimed that bad residential loans were packaged as residential mortgage-backed securities and Was sold. After Castells issued a lengthy judgment, the parties settled the claims for $850 million.

In that case, the trustees of three trusts alleged that UBS breached certain representations and warranties it made on 9,342 of the 17,082 mortgage loans that were originally deposited into the three trusts, and they recovered $200,000 in damages and loss. Was entitled to more than 2 billion. The evidence was presented at the trial, which was held without a jury before Judge Castells of the Southern District of New York. The court found that UBS had breached the guarantees on 13 of the 20 loans examined, and the trustee was entitled to recover the monetary equivalent of UBS’s repurchase obligation.

In 2017, Castell presided over the criminal trial of Scott Tucker, who was charged with fourteen counts related to the conduct of a loan sharking business. The jury returned a verdict of guilty on all counts. In 2018, Castells sentenced Tucker to sixteen years and eight months in prison.

Entrepreneur and racing driver Scott Tucker was sentenced to 16 years and 8 months in prison for running an illegal payday loan business that defrauded millions of consumers. Tucker started his online lending business in Kansas City in the late 1990s and located it on Indian tribal land to avoid state laws regulating usury. This man charged interest between 400 and 700 percent, and defrauded customers by automatically renewing the loan without reducing the principal balance.

Tucker was found guilty of 14 criminal charges in October 2017 after a five-week trial. The convicted man was also forced to pay a $1.3 million fine in a civil lawsuit from the Federal Trade Commission, and faces another charge for filing false tax returns.

In 2019 Castells presided over the trial against Juan Antonio Hernández, which ranked as one of the most high profile of his career, and which attracted worldwide attention.

Juan Antonio Hernandez, brother of former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, is accused by federal prosecutors in the United States of smuggling tons of cocaine through Honduras, using weapons to protect his shipments, and providing false information to federal agents. Was imposed. It was Castells who sentenced Honduras to life imprisonment plus thirty years in prison for four charges, including drug trafficking into the United States.

Juan Antonio Hernandez, also known as “Tony”, was captured at Miami Airport in November 2018 and sentenced in March 2021.

In March 2020, Castells concluded that the Securities and Exchange Commission was likely to demonstrate that a cryptocurrency issued by the company Telegram qualifies as a security and is subject to federal registration requirements. Telegram later agreed to pay $18.5 million in civil penalties.

A judge for the Southern District of New York issued a potentially revolutionary decision in the case of Securities and Exchange Commission v. Telegram Group Inc. The reason for the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) lawsuit against Telegram was its offering and selling of digital tokens called Grams. Without registering them as securities, thereby violating federal securities laws.

Telegram argued that Grams were not securities, but merely a means of exchange within its encrypted messaging platform. It also claimed that it had complied with the Rule 506 exemption by selling Grams only to accredited investors. The SEC considered that Grams were securities because buyers expected to profit from reselling the tokens on the secondary market.

It also claimed that Telegram failed to comply with the Rule 506 exemption because it did not take appropriate steps to prevent investors from reselling Gram to non-accredited persons. Judge Castells granted a preliminary injunction to prevent Telegram from distributing Grams to buyers, concluding that the SEC had a substantial chance of success in proving that Telegram had conducted an unregistered securities offering. Judge Castells also rejected Telegram’s argument that Grams were merely a means of exchange, noting that Grams had the characteristics of an investment contract according to the criteria established by the Supreme Court.

In 2021, Castells was assigned to chair a group of civil actions alleging that Google’s advertising auctions violated the Sherman Antitrust Act.

According to a lawsuit by state attorneys general, Google misled publishers and advertisers for years about the pricing and process of its ad auctions, created secret programs that hurt sales for some businesses and inflated prices for buyers. Google was accused of pocketing the difference between what it told publishers and advertisers about ad costs and using the money to manipulate future auctions and expand its digital monopoly .

Internal correspondence was cited in which Google employees said that some of these practices were tantamount to growing their business through “insider trading”. Google said the state attorney general’s lawsuit was “full of inaccuracies and lacks legal merit.” Google also claimed that its ad auctions were transparent and fair, benefiting both publishers and advertisers. The lawsuit is part of a series of legal actions against Google for alleged anti-competitive practices in the digital advertising market, which generates billions of dollars per year. The lawsuit could have significant consequences for the future of the industry and the regulation of large technology companies.

In a June 2023 decision, Castells dismissed a user’s personal injury case against the airline Avianca and fined two lawyers representing the plaintiff $5,000, who presented false precedents generated by ChatGPT in their briefs. Were.

Kevin Castell fined plaintiffs’ lawyers $5,000 after using ChatGPT to investigate court citations mentioning six false cases fabricated by OpenAI’s artificial intelligence tool.

Steven Schwartz and Peter LoDuca, attorneys at the law firm Levido, Levido & Oberman, cited fake cases created by ChatGPT and “when they filed non-existent judicial opinions with fake quotes and phrases created by the ChatGPT AI tool.” Abandoned his responsibilities and then continued to defend. The claims.” False opinions after court orders called into question their existence,” the federal judge wrote. Kevin Castell on the case.

The judge fined both lawyers and their firm $5,000 under joint liability. Additionally, lawyers would be required to send letters to six actual judges who were “misidentified as the authors of false opinions” cited in their legal writings.

Castell described the legal analysis of one of the false cases as “meaningless”. In addition to approving the attorneys, Castells granted Avianca’s motion to dismiss the case. The judge agreed with the defendant that the two-year limitation period under the Montreal Convention applied and that the plaintiff’s claim was filed too late.